When I was seven we were in class and were asked to do a book review. I went up to the teacher - a nun - and asked her how to spell "so shitty". She asked me to repeat what I wanted which I duly did to her horror and she told me to sit down. I then went back to her and told her the rest of the title of the book which was Secret Seven. The word was society - as in Secret Seven Society by Enid Blyton - but I had never heard the word society pronounced, I had only read it!

Dee

When reciting my ABC's i could never figure out which letter was "elemental pee." C'mon now, you sing LMNOP quickly and see what you come up with!

Ian Spragg

When I was in kindergarten I was proud that I could spell my name. I showed my teacher a drawing that I had signed, and she told me to "use a capital letter." I wasn't sure what she meant, but since I lived in Madison, the capitol of Wisconsin, I drew a picture of the Capitol building behind my name.

Anon

When I first saw "brb" on an im I thought the person burped, not that they would be right back.

Anon

When I was in kindergarten I used to think that the letter 'n' was in the alphabet twice because at the end of the song, you would sing, "Y and Z", but nobody was being very clear in their pronunciation. This was a source of confusion for probably two years when I would ask my mom "which 'n' do I use here?"

Matt

I used to think that the alphabet song went "L, a minnow, P". I wondered why the song was talking about tiny fish!

Aarinsky

When my son was learning to sing the alphabets it always came this way. i,j,k,elephantpee, q,r,s........

Tinkle-Wink

I used to read the sign outside of convenient stores or gas stations that said "no loitering." I didn't know what loitering meant and would always laugh to myself because I thought that the people who made the sign spelled littering wrong.

Kelly

i have always thought that letters have genders and personalities. for example, 'A' was very soft and kind and showed up when you needed her. 'B' was sad and masculine, because boy and blue start with B. the masculine letters are B, D, G, H, J, M, N, O, R, S, T, W, and X. the feminine ones are A, C, E, F, I, K, L, P, Q, U, V, Y, and Z.

dont ask how i came up with this

kay

Before I could read, I would play with my mother's typewriter. I understood the concept that letters formed words but thought that ANY combination of letters would spell out a word. I would type a jumble of letters, take the paper out of the typewriter, and handing it to my parents, ask them what it said. Of course, I always spelt out something very profound.

Emily C.

When I was small I thought that the L,M,N,O,P part of the ABC's really was "Elliot went pee". I have no earthly idea why but that is what I thought until I was singing one day and my mother informed me otherwise.

Manna

At my primary school we had to take it in turns to read part of a story out of a book, and then we'd go through some of the longer words and say what they meant. During my turn, I came across the word "cupboard". I didn't know that cupboard was spelt like that, so I pronounced it as "cup board". The teacher asked me if I knew what it meant, and I said it was a board that you hung cups on, and that we had one at home. Oh, the shame.

lu

When I was little and had just started school, I believed I could spell any word by just sounding out the first few letters and then saying the rest of the word as normal. I'd march around the house proudly yelling, "Listen, Daddy, I can spell table! T-A . . .bull!" I can't remember how long this went on before I learned real spelling, but until then I was convinced that I was really smart and that my way was just as good as using all the letters.

Mandi

I thought that singer/songwriter was spelled this way: sing-a-song-writer...

Anon

When I was young, I clearly didn't have all of the language skills that I do now, so I was often frustrated by the fact that I could not spell many words. I thought that in order for a vowel to say its name, the word had to have an "e" in it. Thus, I would spell a word like "cold" as "coled." Also, I would write notes to my mom using only the first letters of each word because it was easier, and I was sure she would understand what I ment. Thus, if I wanted to say "I made my bed and I love you" it would read "I M M B A I L Y." I cannot imagine why she never asked me about this.

Anonymous

My name startes with an "E" and when I was learning to write my name, I thought that after you 'made' the vertical line, and the line on top of it and the line on the bottom, instead of just putting in one more line across the middle of my capital "E'"s I thought you were supposed to squeeze as many lines in between the top and bottom as possible...I eventually went into kindergarten and one of the first things my teacher asked me was "Erica, why does your "E" look like a comb?!"
...I was so embarrassed that I had been doing it wrong for so long...(and here I thought all along that I could do it better than anyone else...after all, they could only fit ONE line between the tops and bottoms of thier "E'"s!!)

Erica

When I was between 3 and 4 and learing to write the letters of the alphabet and my name, I thought the letter E could be drawn with an infinite amount of horizontal lines.

Andrea

I used to believe that the capital letter "E" could have as many lines as you could fit in it, not just the three.

Stephanie

When I was young, I thought that in the alphabet in between the letters "Y" and "Z", that there was another "N", so I figured it was the Spanish "N" with the tilde over it.

Suzanne

When I was small, my friend Melissa wrote her name in all capital letters, letting the center line of the A extend past the sides, making it look somewhat like a star missing the bottom two lines. She told me that only certain people could write their names like this, as it affected pronunciation, and I was devastated. For months I came home crying from daycare because I couldn't cross my A's like she had, and afterward, insisted being called 'Diamond' so that I could write my name with the amazing A's.

Kara